


when he calls, he calls for me

by AngieWithMels



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Force Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:12:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5699605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngieWithMels/pseuds/AngieWithMels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren was pain and anguish and hatred so deep sometimes it brought Rey to her knees.</p>
<p>Rey could feel it behind every emotion she had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when he calls, he calls for me

**Author's Note:**

> So I finally couldn't help myself.
> 
> Title from Shades of Cool by Lana Del Rey.

Kylo Ren was pain and anguish and hatred so deep sometimes it brought Rey to her knees.

Rey could feel it behind every emotion she had. When she managed to make the forsaken rock float for four straight hours and the stoic Master Luke had smiled at her, she felt a lightening in her chest, a feeling of pride so wonderful she felt like she could smile forever. And immediately she felt a revolting lurch in herself, a seething hatred towards nothing in particular, so strong that Luke could feel it.

“Rey, are you alright? I felt something… Something wrong.”

And suddenly the feeling dissipated, hanging on the fringe of her thoughts. And that heart-lightening feeling was gone with it.

Master Luke had nodded in worry when she explained the feeling.

“I’d worried about that,” he said, giving her a cup of tea that he said would help, although it tasted just like a bundle of grass boiled in water, “I think you and Ben have made a Force bond during the interrogation.”

She felt the same twinge of discomfort at the name that she always felt, a sinking in her stomach that made her feel nauseous.

“What can I do about it?” she asked.

“Keep training.”

So she did.

The following months were filled with endless hours of meditation, sparring, and manipulation of things with the Force. The bond faded in and out, sometimes becoming so small she was sure it had disappeared, sometimes hitting her so strongly she could see things that weren’t actually there. The bright, overhead lighting of some ship. The oppressive humidity of some faraway planet. The overwhelming frustration of some obscure situation and the itch of a wound on her jaw.

She tried to mention it to Master Luke every time it happened. His eyes always looked so worried despite his neutral face and he always gave her that bitter tea that didn’t feel like it was helping that she skipped a few times until she was only telling him when it happened on occasion.

What was most disconcerting was that it humanized him. Every time she errantly scratched at her jaw at a scar that wasn’t there, she remembered the red and blue light reflecting in his eyes as they fought. Every time that he raged over some inconvenience, she could feel _why_ he was angry and it made sense in a strange, juvenile way.

And sometimes, something happened that pleased him. He accomplished something that made him proud. One time he did something rebellious and the rush of breaking whatever rule it was made her feel giddy as she desperately tried to meditate, looking over the edge of the island and over the churning blue waters.

Then it happened, one afternoon during a sparring match with Master Luke. Kylo had received bad news, something that incensed him enough to push him past his short temper. Although she was only holding a sturdy stick, she felt the heat on her hand as he lit the lightsaber, and she attacked Master Luke with the same ferocity and anger that Kylo was attacking whatever poor piece of metal or wall he’d focused his rage on.

The sudden shift in attitude surprised Luke but he blocked her attack with only the slightest hesitation.

It had never been this strong before. Her blood pounded in her ears and she yelled in her next attack, grimacing in hate when he blocked her again. His face was close to hers, forcing eye contact.

“Rey, calm down.”

Half of her mind raged in anger at the suggestion and her body tensed for another attack while the other half heard the instruction. Master Luke stood across from her, but her body stood frozen in her stance.

“Close your eyes, take a deep breath,” Master Luke commanded from her, and this time she followed his instruction. The inhale was difficult, and she exhaled with a shudder when she finally centered, but she felt the control come back to her muscles.

And she felt the surprise in the connection when Kylo did the same without his conscious decision.

“Master Luke, I-”

“I know,” Luke interrupted, “Kylo’s rage overwhelmed you.”

_Don’t tell him_ came the overwhelming feeling, foreign from within her mind through the connection. And so she didn’t, she just nodded.

\--

 Rey was happiness and accomplishment and compassion so all-encompassing it brought Kylo pain and confusion.

It first happened when at one point, she’d sidestepped and momentarily fooled Master Luke and he didn’t block her attack in time, winning her a point against a man who had won every sparring match between the two of them for _months_ without ever trying. He’d been talking to one of the Stormtroopers about the oncoming search and raid and felt a smile creeping up on his face. A feeling of pride and accomplishment that he hadn’t felt since he’d managed to knock one of his mother’s cups off a tree stump to the glee of Chewbacca when he was a child.

The change in the Force had been disturbing after the initial rush had faded, and he’d meditated for days, probing on the outer realms of his consciousness until he found something that wasn’t supposed to be there. Something new and different, and so far away from the center of his mind he could get lost in it.

Snoke had mulled it over when he told him, had pierced painfully into Kylo’s mind to explore it, and pulled away with the hesitant conclusion that a weak Force bond must’ve been made during the interrogation.

“It may work in our favor,” Snoke’s voice was low and dreadful and it made Kylo’s stomach cramp and sink in his abdomen, “But it may also be our downfall. Try to block it off.” And with that, Kylo was dismissed, with only the throbbing headache of the unwelcome probing to carry him off to his room.

He meditated and worked on his mental blocks for hours and hours and felt fairly confident that it had worked. Weeks went by and nothing happened. Meditation brought nothing except the edges of his consciousness, clean and crisp, without any disconcerting fuzziness on the exterior or unexplained bursts of emotion or feeling.

Until one day, when eating dinner, his heartrate started to rise. His back broke out in a cold sweat and he excused himself from the table to the confused look of his comrades to hurryingly pace down a hallway of the ship.

Despite the deep breathing and repetitive exercises his heart rate continued to soar, his hands were shaking, and when he finally took off his helmet and looked at himself in the mirror, despite the bright light, his pupils were dilated.

It wasn’t panic. It wasn’t anxiety. It wasn’t even loss of self-control. It was excitement. And he felt it swell in his chest as he saw himself in the mirror, the sudden feeling of gravity pulling his body for a few seconds of freefall before a cooling sensation washed over him and he could _taste_ the salt on his lips.

The shock at the realization faded away as his body became his own again. His heart rate returned to something more normal and the taste of seawater faded into the dull bread served in the mess hall.

Meditation brought no peace, instead only a sudden realization that the connection was back, a blip in the outer reaches that must’ve been repairing as he grew lax. He worked to cut it back off, finding himself coming back to the surrounding world in a daze nearly three days later.

“What alerted you to its resurgence?” Snoke asked him that evening.

“I started to feel my heart rate going up unnaturally,” Kylo began to respond, before Snoke raised a hand.

“Not what happened to you – what happened to her to reopen this bond?”

“I…” Kylo hesitated, “I think she jumped off of a cliff, and into an ocean.”

The Sith sat up a bit straighter, but the grim expression on his face only seemed to harden further, leading Kylo to believe that perhaps that wasn’t even close to the response he’d expected.

“Let me look upon it again,” Snoke said, his hand reaching forward towards the helmet, and Kylo could only close his eyes and brace for the coming pain.

Despite weeks of silence from her end and endless days and nights of meditation and attempts to block the intrusion, the bond stayed strong. Some days it was weaker and he could barely feel it. Other times it was plain as daylight, piercing into his consciousness as soon as he closed his eyes.

He could catch little snippets of information over the bond. His feet would ache for a few seconds without reason, he brushed his hair trying to get rid of the grittiness of seasalt that wasn’t there, and one night, going over some routine reports of activity in the South-East quadrant, he missed his father so strongly that his eyes burned with tears.

One day he was sure. He was certain of her location. He’d sent ship after ship towards a rocky island on a planet a few dozen parsecs away. And despite searching high and low, the only thing they found were a few ugly birds and a terrified weasel.

The second they were back on the ship his lightsaber was in his hand. He screamed in rage at nothing in particular, lighting it up and slashing aimlessly across the room, sparks and wires and fire spreading across the room as the soldiers shrank back and fled.

And he felt the rage jump across the bond, he felt his lightsaber change as if it were simply a sturdy twig in his hand, and the concerned face of Luke Skywalker like a mirage in front of him. And the anger burned in his blood as he attacked it with as much force as he could muster, his weapon cutting through the circuitry of the station like butter.

“Calm down,” Master Luke said, and Kylo screamed again in anger raising his saber to deal another blow at the far-too familiar words being echoed into his mind, but his arms simply froze in the air.

His ragged breaths stopped and his eyes closed. The deep inhale was painful for how hard he tried to stop it from happening. He felt it through her, something he hadn’t felt, something he’d been trying not to feel for decades. The delicate balance, wrenching him from the depths of the Dark Side, to the precipice between the Dark and the Light. When he shudderingly released the breath, his arms were limp by his sides, his saber extinguished and the anger…

The anger was gone.

He could hear her, now, could see through her eyes and feel her surprise and the uncomfortable feedback when she felt into his own.

“Master Luke, I-” she said, but Luke shook his head in understanding.

“I know, Kylo’s rage overwhelmed you.”

_No_ , she wanted to say, _No, something happened. He’s calm._

_Don’t tell him_ , Kylo’s mind practically shouted across their bond, with an urgency he didn’t quite understand.

He didn’t understand why she listened to his request, but she did.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me at angelaandmels.tumblr.com for more fics, sneak peeks, general fandom related stuff, and... Yeah, that's about it. Feel free to send prompts, questions, hate, love, and everything there. Please comment!


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